Retro Yearly List #18 [1992: Mortal Kombat]

Right, when it comes to MK, I have to pay attention to how much nostalgia factor I'm putting in my reviews since it should be one of my favorite franchises of all time.

MK1 was one of my most played cartridges back on SNES times, for my journey here I decided to go with the Arcade version, and I just learned that the port is extremely underwhelming, the lack of blood and censored fatalities take out basically what makes those titles shine. I remember well the first time I got access to internet and all the inputs, and tried to perform the fatalities on my SNES, then I hit Johnny Cage's and was like... W%F was that ?

Talking about the original version, it's pretty good, even though the game was a banger for me in the old times, now I can see the effects of time on the first title.
Gameplay is pretty stiff and slow, and sometimes bugs will occur, you can't combo more than 2 moves here and even that is not that easy to do. Sometimes even special moves will fail to be cast, but fatalities inputs are ok here.

The graphics.. you know, it's a unique style, it blew our child minds when we first saw it, I would say it aged well.
The sound is nostalgic, but like any MK game, it just do its job, which adds to the mystic and shaolin atmosphere
of the time, I also miss that a lot on the recent titles.

The lore here tells the basics of a massive universe that will be formed in the future, it works for the game, already giving the characters personality and personal goals, and their endings are also alright. (Shout out to Raiden's ending epic last catchphrase: "Have a nice day")

Reptile as secret character was a great addition, although seemed to be a pretty rushed feature, it was nice to have something to have kids discussing about and trying to trigger the hidden battle, that's a pretty missed culture on modern gaming.

Difficulty will get on your nerves a lot of times, opponents will instantly unfairly react to your inputs, and oddly, this will happen at random times, regardless of the selected difficulty, but I cannot complain that much, knowing what awaits me at the next adventure.

Reviewed on Apr 26, 2024


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